Friday, September 28, 2012

How Simple Can This Be? Guest Teaching by Joan Tollifson

WELCOMETO THE TWENTY-SEVENTH EDITION OF OUR GUEST TEACHING SERIES.First off, let me say how pleased I am that you've shown so much interest in our two newest features, the First Chapter Preview, and the new Beyond Recovery blog. Both did very well over the last couple of weeks. We're introducing something fresh for this fortnight that I hope we'll see a lot of: the Double Feature! What I mean is that whenever possible I'll host both an article by our guest, and a book excerpt. Last night I signed up Greg Goode to do this for us in late winter, when his next book, Emptiness and Joyful Freedom comes out. Joan Tollifson's kickoff combination post-and-excerpt is a terrific way to start.

I MET JOAN JUST THIS YEAR, but I've followed her work for quite a while. I first started reading her and visiting her old website (or one of them!) several years ago when she was living in Chicago. I later heard great things about her from a guy who completely changed my life, Scott Kiloby. Joan is now in Oregon, my old stomping ground. She's been teaching since 1996, which is a l-o-n-g time in contemporary Nonduality.

I KNOW JOAN THE SAME WAYI know most people in Nonduality--via email. All of my friends these days are fellow writers. I talk to some of them on the phone now and again, or better yet, Skype, but given that we are all writers, email is by far our most common form of communication. I have exchanged hundreds of emails with one writer in particular whom I've never once spoken to orally. It works; why fix it?

WHAT I HAVE FOUND in exchanging a number of emails with Joan is that she is precisely like her books: clear, direct and funny, all wrapped up in language that is both elegant and efficient. My Amazon review of Nothing to Grasp gives her high praise and she deserves it.

A QUICK WORD ABOUT MY BOOK AND DVD REVIEWS. A lot of people read them and write me about them. You may have noticed that I don't have any negative ones. It's not that I never read a spiritual title that I don't love, it's just that when I do, I don't review it. If I can't say something good about a book, I say nothing. I might have misunderstood the author; it might have been an off night for me; if there is some misunderstanding, then it could be entirely mine. It's just too easy to tear stuff down; I'm not in that business. My level of enthusiasm for a book or film--from moderately high to completely bowled over--will always be apparent within the review itself.

JOAN TOLLIFSON has an affinity with Advaita, Zen and radical nonduality, but she
belongs to no tradition or lineage. Joan explores nonduality in the context of
everyday life, drawing from her own experiences with addiction, disability, and
other human issues. She has been holding meetings since 1996 and is the author
of Bare-Bones Meditation: Waking Up from the Story of My Life (1996), Awake
in the Heartland: The Ecstasy of What Is (2003), Painting the
Sidewalk with Water: Talks and Dialogs about Nonduality (2010), Nothing
to Grasp (2012), and Death: The End of Self-Improvement (still in
progress and slated for publication early in 2013). Joan has lived in
California, New York and Chicago, and is currently living in southern Oregon.

LET ME NOTEthat Joan will be holding meetings in Ashland, Oregon in October and December, and will be doing the same in London in November. Details can be found in the links at the end of the post. For some writers we work to scrape up a decent selection. For Joan, we've had to pare them down to keep them manageable.

AND NOW...

HOW SIMPLE CAN THIS BE?byJoan Tollifson

What
is happening in this bodymind right now? Reading words on a computer screen,
hearing sounds, seeing shapes and colors, breathing. And what else is going on?
Is there expectation, curiosity, excitement, boredom, restlessness? Can we take
a moment to pause and be aware of how it is right now, without trying to modify
or correct it in any way, but simply being awake to the bare actuality of this
moment, just as it is?

Traffic
sounds, bird songs, an airplane flying over, wind rustling the leaves, a
television in another room, children’s voices, a dog barking. Shapes, colors.
The movement of breathing, the sensation of contact with the chair, a cool
breeze gently touching the skin, a tingling in the feet, maybe an uneasiness in
the belly or a tightness in the throat, perhaps a vague sense of anxiety or
discontent, these words registering in the mind.

Does
this present happening take effort, or is it all happening effortlessly by
itself?

This
moment is utterly simple and straightforward, totally obvious, completely
unavoidable, effortlessly being just exactly the way it is, however that is. It
may be painful or unpleasant, but there is nothing confusing about the present
moment until we start thinking.

Then
suddenly we begin to think (and
believe) that we are a separate fragment disconnected from the whole. We feel
lost and lacking. It seems as if we need to figure everything out and get
somewhere better than where we are. We try desperately to improve ourselves and
to succeed at being somebody. We fear death, imagining this bodymind to be something
solid and persisting, something separate from the rest of the universe. We crave
what we don’t have and resist what we are. Fearing the thought-created specter
of meaninglessness, we search desperately for meaning, and the more we search
for it, the more meaningless everything seems.

We
try to think our way to liberation,and the more we think, the more tangled up in perplexity and uncertainty we
seem to get. We try to get rid of the self but can’t seem to do it. We try to
have a nondual experience (whatever we imagine that might be) and then we try
to make that experience last forever, but instead what seems to show up again
and again is disappointment and dissatisfaction, frustration and doubt.

Rather
than trying to fix all of thisor come up with some comforting new philosophy
or some inspiring plan of action, can we wake up instead to what is utterly
simple and totally effortless, the happening of this moment, just as it is?

Is
it possible that waking uphere and now could be the gateless gate, the golden
key, true enlightenment, total liberation?

Of
course, enlightenment and liberation and golden keys are loaded ideas that can instantly
trigger a kind of hopeful excitement and expectation, so rather than getting
lost in wild ideas about something spectacular and imaginary, let’s come back
to the bare simplicity of right here, right now.

How
is it?

Instead
of rushing in to provide a label or a conceptual description, can we simply be
awake to the bare actuality of this present moment, the wordless reality?

If
the mind says,“Okay, this is nice, but what’s next? Where’s the enlightenment
and the total liberation?” – can we hear those thoughts as thoughts and come
back to the nonconceptual simplicity of sounds, bodily sensations and
breathing? Can we feel the desire for
something bigger and better, or the urge to get away from what’s here now, and
simply allow those feelings and sensations to be here?

If
we’re interested in exploring the nature of reality, rather than adopting the
ideas of others, can we explore our actual direct experience here and now?

There
is undeniably variation and diversity in this present happening (different sounds,
sensations, thoughts, feelings, shapes, colors), but is there any actual separation between hearing and seeing
and thinking, or between awareness and the content of awareness, or is it all showing
up together as one whole, seamless moving picture, ever-changing but always
Here / Now?

If
you look for the one who is supposedly “having” this present experience, the
one who is supposedly “doing” the hearing and the thinking, can you actually
find anyone or anything at the helm? Can
you even find a helm or a center? There may be an idea that there is “me” encapsulated inside “my body” looking out
at “the world” and steering this bodymind through life, authoring my thoughts, making
my decisions, choosing how to live my life. This “me” is conceived of as a kind of soul-like entity living inside the body,
an independent unit of consciousness. But can it be seen right now that this separate,
encapsulated entity is only an idea, a mental image, a thought, a story about what’s going on here that
has been learned?

Can
you see that even your “body” is also an idea, a mental image, a conceptual
abstraction of something that is actually nothing but continuous movement
inseparable from everything that is supposedly not your body? If that sounds
far-fetched, close your eyes and give your full attention to sounds and somatic
sensations. As you do that, what happens to the apparent solidity and separateness
of “your body”? Can you actually find a
place in your direct experience where “you” begin and end, an actual
boundary-line between inside of you and outside of you? You can think of a boundary. You can picture (or
imagine) one. But can you actually find
it? Does it actually exist? Are the traffic sounds inside you or outside you?
Is there a difference?

Of
course, functionally,you have a sense of location and boundaries and identity
with a particular body, and this will always be here as needed (unless you have
a serious brain injury), so that you will know your name and how to cut up a
carrot without chopping off your fingers, and whose mouth to put the food in,
and how to distinguish between your dog and your computer. Waking up to
seamless, boundless unicity doesn’t mean you will make the mistake of eating
dog poop for lunch or walking in front of a bus because “all is one.”

Waking
up to unicity simply means not being fooled by thoughts and concepts, not
mistaking a mirage for reality. And waking up only happens now. There is no
such thing as a permanently awake person. So don’t imagine that “you” will
cross some magical finish-line after which mirages no longer show up and being
fooled never happens again. Being fooled is no problem unless thought is taking
it personally and identifying with it as “my” problem that means something “about me.”

Thinking
is an aspect of this seamless,nondual happening. It happens automatically. You
don’t even know what your next thought will be. Thoughts pop up, unbidden – sometimes
useful and creative thinking, sometimes mindless gum-chewing type thinking, and
sometimes the me-centered, obsessive, confused, tail-chasing, problematic
thinking that generates the dualistic mirage and brings with it suffering and
ever-more confusion: “I’ve ruined my
whole life, nobody loves me, I’m a failure, the world is going to hell, I’m
right and you’re wrong, you’ve ruined my life, I’m not enlightened and I
probably never will be, how can I stop feeling anxious all the time? What if…?
If only…. Maybe I should…..”

We can’t make
ourselves stop thinkingthese kinds of painful thoughts. That doesn’t work. But
if we begin to pay careful attention to what is actually happening (as opposed to what we think is happening), we begin to wake up from the hypnotic
entrancement in thought and belief. We
begin to notice how thinking creates a virtual reality, a mental abstraction, a
map-world – and we begin to question our thoughts, and to realize that thoughts
are never absolutely true, and in many cases, they are not even relatively true.
We begin to notice and be aware of the
difference between thinking, on the one hand, and perceiving or sensing on the
other. We notice that sensing can include pain, but that it takes thinking to
suffer or to become confused. And it takes thinking to materialize the mirage
of a separate self.

Thinking
is not some evil force that is opposed
to unicity. But it is only in the
virtual reality created by thought that we seem
to have dualism, conflict, confusion and separation. This is why many teachings
focus so much on being aware of thoughts as thoughts. But it’s helpful to
recognize that even the appearance of dualism is nothing but unicity appearing
as dualism. Thought is not an enemy that we must banish, and waking up doesn’t
mean never thinking again. It simply means waking up in this moment here and
now from entrancement in that virtual reality.

What
is it that wakes up? What is it that sees thoughts as thoughts? What is
beholding the whole movie of waking life, including the character we identify
as “me” and the ever-changing story-lines and dramas? Where is all of this occurring?
Is awareness inside the body, or is the body appearing in awareness? Does
awareness have a size, a shape, a gender, an age?

When
we first wake up in the morning,it actually takes a split second to remember
our name, our role and our story. Sometimes we can actually see that reconstruction
happening. And then every night in deep sleep, it all disappears again. The
world disappears, our story disappears, our problems disappear, “I” disappear
as the one who cares about all this – everything
perceivable and conceivable disappears. How solid and substantial and real can
all the forms and events in this movie of waking life actually be, and how real
is the “me” at the center of it all?

Waking
up to boundlessness and seamlessness doesn’t mean we dismiss everyday life or
ignore the world as “just an illusion.” But we begin to see it all in a bigger
context, in a more fluid way, without imagining that form is something solid
and fixed and “out there” apart from this awaring presence. And we no longer
imagine that this awaring presence is encapsulated inside a separate bodymind, or
that the imaginary thinker is in control of “my life.”

Whenever
we feel filled with doubt and confusion, I recommend letting go of everything
that can be doubted and discovering what remains. What is it that we are
absolutely certain about? What is it that we cannot possibly doubt? What is it
that requires no believing in order to be?

We cannot
deny being here now, can we? And by that, I mean this impersonal awaring
presence. We can doubt any idea about
who or what is present or aware, but we cannot doubt the bare fact of being
here and knowing we are here. And we cannot deny this present happening
(hearing, seeing, sensing, thinking). We can doubt any description or explanation
of this happening, but not the bare actually
or suchness of it.

When
we “come back” to thisthat requires
no beliefand is impossible to doubt, the simple actuality Here / Now (which,
of course, we have never really left), there is no self, no other, no dualism,
no problem. There is simply this,
just as it is.

By
giving attention to our actual present moment experiencing,we begin to see
that there is simply this ever-present, ever-changing happening, that there is
no one at the center of this present experiencing (even if it sometimes seems that there is). We see that this
endless unfolding never goes anywhere, for it is always Here / Now. This present
happening is obvious and unavoidable, but at the same time, it cannot be
grasped.

And
we don’t need to grasp it. Unicity isn’t something we have to “get.” It is what we are. It is all there is.

But
whenever we imagine that we are separate from unicity,we instantly feel
alienated, vulnerable and lacking. We begin to seek what we imagine is missing.
We are like a wave seeking the ocean and insisting that we have never
experienced water. We imagine some fantastic state of consciousness that we
think others have arrived at, a state beyond all suffering and confusion, and
we want to arrive at this mythical promised land. Chasing after that promised
land is like running towards a mirage-lake in the desert sands. It is hopeless.

But
that’s not really bad news,for when we wake up from this false picture of
reality, we realize that nothing is missing, nothing is broken, and there is no
one to be enlightened or unenlightened, lost or found. There has never been
anything other than the ocean waving. Even running towards a mirage-lake is
nothing but ocean waving.

This
realization is sometimes called awakeningor enlightenment or liberation, but
these words create a lot of confusion, because the mind habitually tends to picture
some kind of achievement or permanent experience, and it tends to take this
imaginary achievement personally and imagine that there is “me” who either is
or isn’t enlightened. And that’s delusion. We’re back to that absurdly comic
adventure of the wave seeking the ocean and evaluating which waves are the
wettest.

Enlightenment
isn’t a perpetually sunny day.No sunny day lasts forever, nor does any cloudy
day. And there is no “me” going back and forth between clear skies and cloudy
ones, or stabilizing permanently in the sunshine. There is simply weather, with
no owner, no doer behind it. The clouds and the sunshine are one undivided
happening, like the heads and tails of a coin.

Unicity
includes everything.It includes
light and dark, up and down, enlightenment and delusion, clarity and confusion,
thinking and sensing, dreaming and waking, practicing and not practicing. It
includes deep sleep and the movie (or multiple movies) of waking life. It
includes imagination and fantasy. It is
everything, and everything is it. There is nothing outside unicity, and there
is nothing that is not unicity.

That
doesn’t mean Hitler was enlightened or that we can’t distinguish between a
chair and a table. It just means that what we functionally and conventionally
refer to and think of as Hitler or a table or a chair is not actually a solid thing that exists independently of everything
else. Every apparent form is nothing but movement and change, and everything is
inseparable from everything else. There is no “me” apart from Hitler, and there
is no enduring “somebody” to be forever enlightened or forever deluded. The
only forever is now, and now doesn’t ever stay the same.

That
can all sound very heady and abstractand mystifying if we’re hearing it only
with the intellect and trying to figure it out with thought. But if we simply
pay attention to present moment experiencing, it becomes more and more obvious
in ever-more subtle ways that this is how it is. But it doesn’t become obvious
“to me.” That’s thinking again, inserting an imaginary subject, an imaginary actor
apart from the action, and in reality (in our actual experiencing), no such thing actually exists, not ever. In
direct experience, before we think about it, there is no seer apart from what
is seen, there is simply undivided seeing.

Nonduality
isn’t about “me” becoming somebody who no longer gets confused or no longer has
any human flaws. It doesn’t mean “me” turning into someone who is in some
special state of mindful presence 24/7. It doesn’t mean that “I” have no self
anymore. It doesn’t mean that “I” am “somebody” who is constantly aware of
being nobody, or constantly aware of nondual boundlessness as some kind of
special experience, or never again fooled by mirages or never again caught-up
in a movie-story of encapsulation or separation. The very notion of a
permanently enlightened person is predicated on the very misunderstandings it
claims to have risen above.

So,
can we stop trying to figure all this out mentally and simply come back to the
utter simplicity of where we are: the sounds of traffic, the sensations in the
body, the taste of coffee, the rise and fall of breathing, the cool breeze
blowing in through the window?

And
if the mind says, “that’s just the phenomenal manifestation, that’s not enough,”
is it possible to hear these thoughts as thoughts and not get hypnotized by the
picture they paint? In that imaginary picture
painted by thought, there is separation, dualism and lack. And there is “me”
wanting something more, something special. But in the sound of the traffic, there
is no me and no separation. There is only the nondual absolute, just as it is.

So
if we find ourselves lost in thought, racing on the mental treadmill, chasing
after phantasms and mirages, is it possible to wake up, to stop running toward
something or away from something, to simply be present right here, right now?
To feel the breathing and see the raindrops glistening on the green leaves and
the exquisite cigarette butt floating in a pool of rainwater in the gutter. And
maybe to investigate the sense of dissatisfaction and restlessness and unease
that is at the root of so much of our human activity. Is it possible to allow
this dissatisfaction to be here, to simply feel the sensations without running
away or seeking a solution, to see the thoughts that are involved as thoughts,
to allow it all to unfold and reveal and dissolve itself, effortlessly?

In
that simple wakefulness, open to whatever is here, we can notice that everything
is included Here / Now. Even judgments
and desires, even resistance and seeking, even the human mind spinning those
familiar thoughts about “This isn’t it” and “I’ve ruined my whole life,” all of that is allowed to be here, and all
of it is simply another momentary appearance, another momentary shape that
unicity is taking. None of it is personal. None of it is really a problem.

When
this presence is awake to itself, there is love for everything. This
unconditional love, this boundless awareness, this open heart dissolves hatred
and ignorance. It dissolves them not by condemning them or fighting against
them or trying to control them, but by accepting them as impersonal happenings
and by shedding light on how life actually is
(rather than getting lost in thoughts about how everything could be, should be, might be, or used to be).

And
the most important thingto remember is that waking up always boils down to
right here, right now. It is never somewhere else or yesterday or at some
future time when conditions are different or better. It is just this, exactly as it is.

"FRED, I STARTED READING THE BOOK OF UNDOING this morning and had an awakening to reality, my true nature/space, hard to describe, feels phony to put into words. I have never had this intense of a breakthrough and I have done just about every thing under the sun for years and years. man this is awesome!*~Pete Castellano, Tucson, AZ[*See Pete's full letter on The Book of Undoing page.]

"WHILE READING THIS BOOK I had my first glimpse of "It"! I finally have experienced it for myself. That experience has given me a new level of peace and gratitude."

~Mary Leary

"IF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR A CLEARand concise book on radical nonduality, this is on "my" must-read list."~Yaakov Litman

"THIS BOOK UNDID ME! I don't expect the world will ever look quite the same again. Don't think about it...don't let yourself be distracted from this opportunity, just read this book now!"~Laurk

"SO MANY BOOKS leave the reader lost in the words, but this one actually takes you beyond the words and shows you how to "find it", what the experience of "it" is, and what happens to "it" when imagination starts to dance again. One cannot help but discover the real nature of what we are. These are the same goals of many similar books, but this one actually succeeds in taking the reader there."~K. A. Popko, Wisconsin"FIRST OF ALL, WONDERFUL POINTING in The Book of Undoing!!! Love it; going through it again. Less is more and I feel you've hit the mark in this definitive book. Bravo!" ~Anthony Wedge, Mt. Pleasant MI"FOR THE EXHAUSTED spiritual seeker this book is dynamite. It literally blows your mind."~William C. Wright, North Pomfret, VT"FINISHED BEYOND RECOVERY and immediately dove into this one. I can't say enough about the energy and vividness that Mr. Davis brings to Inquiry. I would read anything he wrote." ~Wallace Chapman, Portland, Oregon

"STEP BY STEP, Fred takes apart delusion,and confusion, leaving behind clear knowing. In this moment, anyway. No guarantees for tomorrow - present understanding is all that counts."~Tom Barron, East Tennessee

"I DEVOURED THE BOOK OF UNDOING and it has provided an abiding dissolution of ego since I read it. Great work. Highly recommended. READ THIS BOOK."~Jess C,Atlanta, GA

GUEST TEACHERS AND WRITERS LINKS CAN BE FOUND IN THE FOOTER OF AwakeningClarityNow.com!

CLICK PHOTO TO VISIT NEW SITE!

BEYOND RECOVERY

"THIS IS A WONDERFUL BOOK. Fred Davis is steeped in the knowledge of nonduality, and this text is marvelously written for those in or out of Twelve Step programs. Clear, intelligent, well written and lots of fun to read!"

"BRAVO TO FRED FOR WRITING WITH SUCH CLARITY. I hope 12 steppers reading this review really get the delicious paradox of that and find themselves picking up this book. Addiction tends to keep us seeking, even if we are seeking recovery. Fred's book has the ability to really bring the timeless wisdom that freedom is in the here and now into the 12 step movement. Great book. I loved it."~SCOTT KILOBY,author, Natural Rest for Addiction: A Revolutionary Way to Recover through Presence."IF THE TRUE MEASURE OF A BOOK is to be found in the perfume that remains behind when all the words have been forgotten then, for Beyond Recovery, it is this quality of honesty, openness and surrender which communicates itself in the words and between them, administering not just to the mind but to the background of Awareness."~RUPERT SPIRAauthor, Presence: The Art of Peace and Happiness"THIS BOOK BY FRED DAVIS extends the culture of [Twelve Step Recovery] and contributes to the current shift in Western civilization, which is one from attending to religion, philosophy, art, history, music, and science as pointers to our true nature, to true nature itself. In other words, it is a shift toward attending to attention, or to the one attending, rather than to the creative outcomes of that kind of attention."~JERRY KATZ, editor, One: Essential Writings on Nonduality

"I SEE THAT THERE IS A CERTAIN MAGICto your word-smithing - it comes directly from reality and points powerfully to reality... it seems to move like a flood tide that raises a heavy form off the rocks and gently settles it in a peaceful ebb-tide of being..."~James Waite,Creator and Editor, Nonduality Living"AGAIN, I WANT TO SAY your writing is amazing. It's very engaging, personable, and smooth. When a book on non-duality feels like a page-turner, that's quite an accomplishment!"~Shanti Einolander, Creator and Editor, ONE: The Magazine

The Living Method of Awakening is an extraordinarily successful process of inquiry, investigation, and direct pointing that encourages immediate recognition of our shared True Nature. Hundreds of people on six continents have found the door to freedom using The Living Method.

Disclaimer

DISCLAIMER: The texts of The Book of Undoing: Direct Pointing to Nondual Awareness, Beyond Recovery:Nonduality and the Twelve Steps, and Awakening Clarity: A Spiritual Sampler, along any associated posts, articles, or texts and websites, such as Awakening Clarity Now, Awakening Clarity, and Beyond Recovery are for educational purposes only and are not intended in any way to be a replacement for, or a substitute to, qualified medical, psychological, financial, or addiction advice, diagnosis, treatment or therapy from a fully qualified source. If you think you are suffering from a medical, psychological, or addictive condition, consult your doctor, or other appropriately qualified professional person or service.